Put the words “hockey" and “musical" together, and the first thing people will likely do is laugh.

That’s just fine with Mitch Albom, who wants nothing more out of “Hockey, the Musical!” than to have audiences rolling in the aisles. His new show, which opens Thursday at City Theatre inside Detroit's Hockeytown Cafe, finds five random people from the U.S., Canada and Russia banding together to save the sport of hockey from being eradicated.

The show is a follow-up of sorts to “Ernie,” Albom's biographical play about beloved Detroit Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell, who died in 2010. (It returns later this summer for a sixth year.)

“I know a lot of people look at my work sometimes and think, 'He writes a lot about life lessons and things,' " said Albom, a novelist, radio host and Free Press columnist, during a brief break from rehearsals last week. "They figure, 'We’ll get something out of this that will give us some perspective on life.' This is not that show.

“If there is a message, it’s probably that it is good to work as a team.”

A love letter to the sport

Albom, the author of best-selling books like “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” used terms like “ridiculous” and “totally farcical” to describe “Hockey, the Musical!” which opens with a projected image of clouds and a deep-voiced announcer who proclaims: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth and man in his image. And man with all his beauty and wonder in the world created sports.”

From there, we learn that the Almighty has arbitrarily decided there are too many sports in the world (mixed martial arts, are you kidding me?), so He sends down an angel (John DeLisa) to wipe one of them out. When hockey is chosen, Stan (Greg Trzaskoma), a super-sized super fan in a Red Wings jersey, springs out of the audience to protest. He gets onstage and then on his knees to implore, "If I can find you 100 pure hockey souls, will you please spare the sport?"

A confident God not only agrees but also lowers the required number of pure souls to five, which prompts Stan to compose a short list of the world's five greatest hockey figures, among them Wayne Gretzky, Steve Yzerman and Don Cherry. The angel has trouble with spelling, however, and instead makes some terrible blunders. The five-person band of misfits he recruits to come to hockey's rescue includes Dawn Cherry (Kelsey Pohl), a New Jersey hairstylist, and Duwayne Gratzkee (Taurean Hogan), a man from Detroit. Together, the crew must learn to work together and score 10 points on a stadium-style scoreboard before the buzzer goes off and the 90-minute play is over.

Along the way, each of the characters breaks into song. Some of the show's tunes are parodies based on popular tunes like the Bee Gees' “More Than a Woman” and the jazz age ditty “Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo' Bye).” Others, like “Kill Baseball” and “Oh Octopus, My Octopus,” are Albom originals.

“I always thought hockey was a funny, quirky lovable, sport,” said the writer, who described his show as Monty Python's "Spamalot" on ice. “It’s a bit of an underdog of the four major sports. It’s always bringing up the rear in ratings and television attention, but it tries so hard. It’s perfect for Detroit. … Plus it puts players in boxes when they do something wrong? How weird is that?"

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Mitch Albom addressed the audience Monday before a preview performance of "Hockey, the Musical!' at City Theatre.(Photo: Kimberly P. Mitchell/Detroit Free Press)

Tragedy and comedy

The lighthearted nature of the show contrasts with some of the events that coincided with its creation.

“Hockey, the Musical!” is dedicated to Lee Rifield, a manager at the Olympia-owned Fox and City theaters, who died in March at the age of 50. “The show was my idea, but Lee was the driving force, the one to say actually do it,” Albom said. "You need people along the way to nudge you; otherwise, it’s just an idea in your head and it sits there. When someone says, 'I’m holding May and June for you to do a hockey musical,' then you think, 'Maybe I’ve got to do this.' "

The show is also a response to the death of Albom’s mother last year. “I was tired of the seriousness of life and figured I’ve got to do something for no other purpose than just to laugh,” the playwright said.

Albom reached out to his younger brother, Peter, to direct the show. A choreographer and dancer who has worked and lived around the world, Peter Albom says collaborations with his brother stretch back to their childhood in Philadelphia. “We (along with sister Cara) used to put shows together in the backyard, shows for every occasion, every family event, every anniversary,” he recalled.

He said his monthlong stint with “Hockey, the Musical!” has been like going back in time. “On every level, it has been great, but the best part is that we don’t have to be careful with each other,” Peter Albom said. “We see things very similarly when it comes to music and performing. This is the kind of project we always dreamed of doing together."

Tapping a Michigan-based community of actors and theater technicians was also a goal of “Hockey, the Musical!” Though the Alboms certainly didn’t discourage actors from Chicago and New York from auditioning for the show, they were glad to find cast members from Warren, Grosse Pointe and Marine City to fit the bill.

Mitch Albom also reached out to Red Wings past and present to record segments for the musical that are projected on a screen behind the set. Audiences will see Yzerman, Darren McCarty and legendary coach Scotty Bowman, who has promised to play himself at some time during the run.

Albom was quick to point out that the show isn't suitable for youngsters. “This is not a show for all ages,” he said. “It’’s impossible to do a PG comedy about hockey. In truth, hockey would probably warrant more of an R rating."

Difficult to stage

Music has long been a part of Albom’s life. Soon after college, he was a struggling musician in New York when he got the bug to write for a small Brooklyn paper. Music helped pay the tuition for graduate studies in journalism.

Though he is now best known as a writer (his new book, “The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto,” came out late last year), he still performs a couple of times a year on keyboards with his band the Rock Bottom Remainders, which includes fellow best-selling authors Amy Tan, Stephen King, Scott Turow and Dave Barry. They mostly play benefit concerts about twice a year.

“I’m very blessed to be able to take my writing and see it come out of the ground in different forms,” Albom said. "Sometimes you sprinkle it, and it comes up as a column; sometimes you sprinkle it,and it comes up as a book; sometimes it comes up as a screenplay, and sometimes it comes up as a movie that you actually see played by actors you really admire."

Because of the physical staging and the music, Albom thinks “Hockey, the Musical!” is the toughest show he has ever been involved with. The songwriting process often meant shopping out instrumental parts of a song and having them assembled back at the theater. A big part of a rehearsal last week involved getting the cues right for the 100-or-so animated images that create the show’s projected backdrops. "There must be 100 different videos, all that have to be cued at exactly the right moment,” Albom said.

Trzaskoma, who plays the roles of both Stan and a carpenter, must interact with many of these projected images. There are very few actual props in the show, aside from a mannequin, a shower curtain, an octopus and shovel — and a mullet and bushy mustache that are big elements of Stan’s costume.

Trzaskoma is the oldest and most familiar actor in the cast, having appeared in or directed several shows at West Bloomfield's Jewish Ensemble Theatre. He also served as a member of Detroit Second City, which occupied the 300-seat City Theatre space in the 1990s.

“During those days I was hired to play this big guy in a huge Red Wings Jersey," he remembered. "I’d walk down the aisles and do whatever I could to fire up fans at the Joe. I guess I was born to play a Red Wings fanatic.”

Both Trzaskoma and Albom believe that “Hockey, the Musical!” is the kind of show that helps bridge the gap between the theater and sports-loving communities.

“I always figure that a lot of times, with musicals especially, it’s the women in the relationship that drive these choices of what to see," Albom said. "I think we’ve created a musical that men and women can enjoy equally. Theater no longer has to be a gender decision.”